According to Dark Souls 2 co-director Yui Tanimura, the game’s new engine will allow players to “immerse themselves within the actual gameplay and feel as if they are actually part of the game itself.”

Talking to Polygon during E3 2013, Tanimura described how Dark Souls 2‘s new engine creates a deeper sense of immersion by adding a great deal more detail and expressiveness to the world.

“The idea of gimmicks in the game is now doable with his new engine,” Tanimura told Polygon. “Things like representing an enemy that is perhaps off-screen but with movement of shadows, or that kind of expression in the game. It’s something that [I] always wanted to do but wasn’t able to do with the previous engine.

“There’s a lot of ideas like that. We don’t want to give everything away, but those kinds of things are small things that we wanted to express, and with this engine we think we can do that.”

Chris Holzworth has wanted to write about games all his life. He first cut his teeth writing for enthusiast sites such as RPGFan, and after writing for just about every other enthusiast website he could came across, wound up as EGM's east coast news correspondent (read: editorial intern) before relocating to LA to serve as news editor. You can follow his rants about storytelling on Twitter @manadrive.[Meet the rest of the crew]